He Goes to Eleven

My son learned the difference between “soft” and “loud” at quite an early age. My husband and I taught him as a survival tactic for our eardrums.  

It was my fault, really. I’m pretty sure it all began when I taught him the concept of “echo”. The stairwell in our house has a great echo, so I taught him that if you called out the word “echo,” you got great reverb. He tried it, then he tried it louder, then he tried it yet louder. And then he discovered that if he shouted it loud enough, he could hit the correct frequency to make the remote control doorbell in the basement ring. Once he discovered that, his volume knob was permanently set to 11.

Very quickly I realized my mistake and attempted to teach him to whisper. Unfortunately, whispering is much less exciting than shouting to a two-year-old. So I tried to outsmart him. (Ha, fat chance.) I figured that if I taught him to contrast shouting and whispering, he wouldn’t need to shout so loud to get the same effect. So together we would shout the word “LOUD!” then whisper the word “soft” over and over. I tried to fool him by shouting a little softer each time but he didn’t fall for that. In fact, he soon discovered that this game was more fun the louder you shouted the word “LOUD.” (The volume of the word “soft” was basically irrelevant. And often as loud as the word “loud.”)

I tried another tack, trying to teach him that there are times when you need to be loud, like when you’re calling to someone who’s at the other end of the playground, and there are times when you need to be quiet, like at a restaurant. He does seem to have gotten the idea of being quiet out in public, for the most part. And he takes advantage of the lesson that his “outside voice” can be much louder than his “inside voice,” and screeches when he’s on the playground or shouts “echo” at the top of his lungs in the parking garage. But for some reason, when he’s playing at home, all those lessons go out the window and the volume knob goes right back to 11.

Lately, he has taken to pointing out to anyone in the room where he is, as if we had misplaced him in the half-second since he’d been looking one of us in the eye. “Mama, here I am!” he’ll shout from two feet away. “Dada, I’m over here!” from the other end of the couch. But the best is when he is actually touching you physically, whether leaning against your back, sitting in your lap, or his latest trick, leaning around you as you’re sitting on the floor or couch, literally touching his nose to yours, and shrieking, “Here I am! Do you see me?!!” No, in fact, I cannot see you, since my eyes cannot focus on an image three microns away from my retinas. But you can bet I can hear you, because

Someday, when my children are both grown and gone, and my house seems empty and quiet, I might miss the days of volume 11.

But probably not.

His Volume Control Goes to 11

When Ryan discovered his own voice, I figured he would experiment with it for a while, then get bored and move on to exploring something else. After all, once he learned how to blow a raspberry whenever he wanted, he moved on to figuring out how to do something else. When he mastered the art of clicking his tongue, he did it all the time for a few days then let it go and practiced something else. But the sound of his own voice, singing, humming, or screeching, seems to have become an unending source of fascination. And in his opinion, the louder the better.

For being a small child, he packs a considerable amount of volume. And not just when he’s shrieking because he’s hurt or scared or upset; he can shriek at top volume just to listen to his own voice. He wakes up in the morning and plays in his crib quietly, then begins to hum or sing and soon the volume escalates. He’s not clambering for us to come get him, he’s just testing to see how loud he can be. He does the same thing while I’m feeding him breakfast. He’ll be happily pounding on the tray of his highchair, obediently opening his mouth for me to shovel in some more oatmeal, and gazing over my shoulder at the birds on the feeder, when suddenly an invisible hand cranks his volume control to 11.

It’s not that big of a deal when we’re at home in the middle of the day. It’s not that big of a deal if he’s in the jogging stroller with Daddy. (It is his “outside voice”, after all.) It’s even manageable when we’re in the car. (Not pleasant, but manageable.) But when we’re in public somewhere, like the grocery store, or a restaurant, or a church service, or on an airplane, it’s considerably less acceptable. The problem is that there’s no way to tell a 9-month-old to use his inside voice. Sometimes if I whisper to him he’ll imitate me and drop his volume down to something more intimate. But more often than not he’ll just stare at me for a second, then screech even more loudly.

Luckily, he’s still curious enough that most of the time a distraction can make him forget to yell. A toy, or a bottle, or a silly face can usually help to turn the volume down a few notches. And in the worst-case scenario, muffling him with an ever-present rag will at least deaden the sound enough that it’s no longer physically painful to any close bystanders.

Jewelry is usually a good distraction.

Hugs can be a good distraction, too.

As are bottles. And sitting in Grandma's lap.

Of course, interesting things on the ceiling (like trombones, for instance) are the best distraction of all!